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Saving the best till last

A European tour ends in Budapest, finally offering a weary Indian traveller some food she can enjoy, and a stunning city dating back millennia

By Shivani Mohan

Published: Fri 18 Jun 2010, 9:51 PM

Last updated: Mon 6 Apr 2015, 1:26 PM

We reached Budapest on the last leg of a European tour, saturated with fairytale palaces, magnificent museums, sanitised roads, candy floss couture and exotic cuisine. My palate was jaded with weeks of eating sumptuous but bland food.

The unusually cold rains at that time of the year had made us all pine for the sunshine and aromas of India, so we couldn’t have come to a better place, as we soon discovered. Budapest, with its sleepy charm, embraces you in a comfortable cornucopia of flavourful food, tales of a tumultuous, but rich, past and soothing medicinal spas.

As we disembarked from the train at the monumental railway station, the feel of a different world is evident. People look more relaxed, laid-back — there are women who look more hardy and hardworking than ‘high maintenance’ and a currency that has you practice counting over and over again.

There are visible signs of globalisation. A McDonald’s and Pizza Hut here, a sleek limousine there, designer brands galore, but the shadow of the Iron Curtain exists. A lot of Budapest is dotted by a series of stark, matchbox style, grim apartment houses that previous regimes created for a socialist, egalitarian, frills-free living.

But our driver is quick to point out,“The world needs to take note of us now. Do you know it was the Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Erno Rubik who created the Rubik’s Cube in 1974? Over 350 million cubes have sold worldwide making it the world’s top-selling puzzle game. We have more to offer. Only the world doesn’t know it yet.”

The city of Budapest is built around the great Danube River, which slices it in half on a curving north-south axis. The hilly west bank is Buda, the flat east is Pest — two totally separate towns until 1873, when they were united to form today’s capital city. Modern Budapest is divided into 23 districts (called kerulet) each designated by a Roman numeral. The two districts you will spend most time in are Buda I (Castle Hill, Buda’s old medieval centre), and Pest V (downtown Pest: a robust, confident, turn-of-the-century creation containing the Parliament, banks, as well as the best shopping.)

The city has a lot of character that comes from weathering many storms and upheavals. It is believed that the first settlement on the territory of Budapest was built by Celts, before 1 AD, to be later occupied by Romans who constructed roads, amphitheatres, baths, and houses with heated floors in this fortified military camp. In the centuries to come the Hungarian region was ruled by Bulgarians, Austrians, Turks and a Soviet regime. Besides many German immigrants, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats and Romanians arrived to blend with the locals over the ages. Needless to say, there are influences of all these cultures. The word Hungarian is derived from Bulgar-Turkic Onogur, possibly because Magyars, or Hungarian people, were neighbours of the Empire of the Onogur (meaning ‘ten arrows’ in old Turkish). The ‘H’ prefix is probably taken from the name of the Huns, a semi nomadic tribe that briefly lived in present day Hungary and, according to medieval legends, were the people from whom the Magyars arose. Hun names like Atilla and Reka are still popular in Hungary.

The city’s buildings display two noticeable styles — those of historicism and art nouveau, or rather several variants of art nouveau, inspired by Syrian and Indian architecture, popularised by Odon Lechner (1845–1914), the most important figure in Hungarian art nouveau.

Scattered throughout the city, one comes across the ‘guardians of Budapest’, carved lions all radiating a sense of dignity and authority. A pair of lions guard entrances to most palaces but the most famous are the four magnificent beasts on the Chain Bridge.

After days of discovering this cultural Rubik’s Cube of sorts, one thing I looked forward to every evening was the heartwarming Hungarian dinners awaiting us at the hotel. Traditional dishes such as the world famous Goulash (gulyás stew or gulyás soup) reminded me of the milder curries of Asian food.

Three ingredients that liken Hungarian food to Asian are onion, paprika (a milder, sweeter version of our red chilli powder) and cream. Hungarian desserts are  exemplary and include the iconic Dobos Cake and Strudels filled with cherries, poppy seed or cheese. The legendary Gundel pancake is a must-try as are the unique ‘dessert soups’ like chilled sour cherry soup and sweet chestnut purée.

The best time to visit the city would be to witness the Budapest Spring Festival, which takes place in the last two weeks of March. Major highlights are symphony orchestra concerts, opera and ballet performances. These take place in the capital’s most important concert halls and theatres, and often near historic monuments. Over the years, a number of regional towns have been included in the Budapest Spring Festival.

There’s more to enjoy with St Stephen’s Day (August 20), which is celebrated with sporting events, parades and fireworks nationwide. Also Formula 1 car races  are held in early August at the Hungaroring near Mogyorod, 18 kilometres northeast of Budapest. There’s enough to keep any tourist happy, even one craving an Indian curry.

As Karoly Gundel, the legendary Hungarian chef par excellence and one of the biggest ambassadors of Hungarian tourism, puts it: “You are all welcome. Along with our excellent cuisine, taste the wines of Badascony, Eger and Togaj. Listen and try to understand the gypsy music, our thousand years of history, our present day problems and achievements...”

PARLIAMENT

Stands head and shoulders above its neighbours on the Pest side of the river. Whether we talk of its external neo-Gothic appearance or its interior, there is but one word to describe it — spectacular. Today it guards the Hungarian Holy Crown, Orb and Sceptre, made open for general public viewing since 2000.

LIBERTY STATUE

The 14-metre high statue, the work of outstanding architect Zsigmond Kisfaludy Strobl, was raised in 1947 in memory of the country’s liberation. And even though the post war period also marked the start of Soviet rule, the statue on Gellert Hill was not removed even after the change of regime, since it had become an indelible part of the cityscape.

PALACE OF ARTS

A modern cultural centre of mammoth proportions, this is the site of Hungary’s National Concert Hall, built to the dimensions of a Gothic cathedral but with state-of-the-art acoustic equipment. The Ludwig museum is also found here.

OPERA HOUSE

One of the most imposing opera houses of its day, the Budapest Opera House opened in 1884. Its neo-classical and neo-Renaissance design is the work of the greatest Hungarian architect of the 19^th century, Miklós Ybl.

SZECHENYI BATHS

One of the reasons the Romans first colonised the area immediately to the west of the River Danube and established their regional capital at Aquincum is so that they could utilise and enjoy the thermal springs. Budapest has some of the oldest medicinal spas, and largest bathing complexes in  all Europe.